Originally Posted by Happydaz (Post 2249447)

What wasn’t explained well “about” the study was that most metropolitan counties and towns assess a fire fee for businesses that is based on square footage and type of business. In other words it is the normal way to do it. Just look at Lake County. They assess homeowners a little over $300 per residence. For businesses you can see the chart they have for square foot assessments. Some very large businesses in Lake County pay over $30,000. Lake county looks just like the study Sumter County paid for. You can look up other metropolitan counties and see similar charts.

Originally Posted by Happydaz (Post 2249447)

What wasn’t explained well “about” the study was that most metropolitan counties and towns assess a fire fee for businesses that is based on square footage and type of business. In other words it is the normal way to do it. Just look at Lake County. They assess homeowners a little over $300 per residence. For businesses you can see the chart they have for square foot assessments. Some very large businesses in Lake County pay over $30,000. Lake county looks just like the study Sumter County paid for. You can look up other metropolitan counties and see similar charts.

Originally Posted by JGibson (Post 2234414)

161% increase, Yikes!

Originally Posted by Rainger99 (Post 2248869)

I am trying to figure out how many fire services we have in the county.

If there is a fire in the Villages but you live outside of Wildwood, who provides fire services?

If there is a fire in the Villages and you live in Wildwood, who provides fire services?

If you live in Wildwood but not in the Villages, who provides fire services?

If you live in Bushnell, who provides fire services?

Originally Posted by Bill14564 (Post 2249492)

I doubt that explanation would have made a difference to the residents who did not want to pay an additional $200 or to the businesses that did not want to pay anything more than $124.

It is good information but to those who wanted to see a $0 increase it would only be rationalization. (Heck, most didn't read the study anyway)

Originally Posted by Normal (Post 2249522)

The county commissioners could pay for all this by raising the impact fees of the developer to what they should be. The Villages Developer pays only 40 percent of the cost of new roads and nothing for other infrastructure like fire, law enforcement.etc. Perhaps they are getting breaks because of the schools they have donated etc?

Originally Posted by Goldwingnut (Post 2248866)

So much conjecture and misinformation here. I’ve spent countless hours writing emails and talking to residents and businesses alike on this topic in the last 3 weeks. I don’t intend to get into a long debate here but I will give you a few facts to clear up some of the misinformation the is most important and confused.

1) very few people pay only $124 for fire protection. $124 only covered about 25% of the total cost of operating the combined fire departments, the balance came from the general fund. The fire departments operations costs represent about 30% of the total general fund budget expenditures. The primary source of funding for the general fund is your county property tax - the county tax line item, not of the entire bill you receive. So about 30% of the county tax line item goes to also funding the fire departments. What does this work out to on an individual basis? Last year for my courtyard villa it is 30% of $1239.81 + $124 or about $496. For a commercial property - we’ll look at the Lofts in Brownwood, last tears County Property tax was $151803, so 30% of that is about $45,540 going to fund the fire departments + the $124 or $45665. This is the same for every property in the county. I did say a few only pay $124, these are smaller properties where the value of the property is low and their county property tax is zero because exemptions, such as homestead, reduce the tax to zero so all they pay is $124.

2) the primary source of the increase is due to the increase in ambulance capacity that was demanded by the residents 2 years ago. I guess the assumption was that someone was going to pay for this new service. Yes, there was some growth factored into this, but this organic growth in the budget was directly offset by the increased revenues received from these properties ($124 + 30% as described above). Funding for building new stations is funded separately.

3) the proposed fire assessment can only be used for fire protection/prevention operating costs, not for advanced life support (ambulance service) or building new fire stations. Basically what was done was that the 30% previously discussed was moved from the general fund out to the Fire Assessment, hence the large increase, and then the cost for ambulance service was added to the general fund offsetting the previous fire expense reduction. Government accounting can be tedious, money is moved between funding sources and the general fund and back out again to funds designated for specific expenditures, this is all done to provide accountability and the ability to follow the money trail. The net result of all of this could be summed up as saying the fire assessment increase is a result of the added ambulance service.

4) impact fees cannot fund this additional cost. Impact fees are a one time fee on new growth that can only be used for adding additional capacity to the fee’s targeted expenditures. Sumter County only has a road impact fee, so it can only be used for adding new roads or increasing capacity of existing roads that are directly impacted by the growth. We could implement a fire impact fee, but that could only be used for expanding fire capacity - new fire stations and trucks, etc. Impact fees cannot be used to offset operating costs. The operating costs - road maintenance, fire station staffing costs, etc. - cannot be funded using impact fees. This requires the question to be asked, if we collect and spend these impact fees on project X, will project X generate sufficient additional tax revenues to offset its annual operating cost? Impact fees are not recurring revenues, they are one time. Some have tried to compare Sumter County impact fees to other counties, it’s not an apples to apples comparison because each county had difference needs and designations for its impact fees. Sumpter County’s unique demographic and building requires do not, at this time, additional impact fees being levied, but even this is scheduled for its 5-year review in the upcoming fiscal year for Sumter County.

These are just a few of the key points on this issue, it is much more involved than most realize. This is what you’ve elected the county officials to understand, evaluate, and make the difficult decisions on.

I could spend the rest of the day typing here on this topic, but I have a busy day ahead of me. I, the other County Commissioners, and the county staff are willing to talk and meet with residents on this and other matters, you can arrange a call or meeting by contacting the county office main number found at Sumtercountyfl.gov.

Originally Posted by Bilyclub (Post 2249778)

I had no qualms about paying the increased fee and loved that the businesses were going to pay their fair share. But.... apparently the businesses, ( T & D and Galaxy), that do a lot of work for the developer launched a campaign to deep six the increase. Since the Daily Sun was involved in this campaign you would have to think that all of this had the developer's blessing. When in Oz remember who is behind the curtain.

Originally Posted by kkingston57 (Post 2249501)

Too much time bickering about this < $17 a month "increase" especially when a lot of residents were complaining about wait times for EMS.

Originally Posted by Goldwingnut (Post 2249551)

So obviously this post was a waste of my time. Many keep going on and on with their misinformation without trying to get the facts, only believing what they want to believe.

I’ve had my head buried in the county budgets for the last 5 years, this past year every more so. I’ve presented you with the facts based on years of experience of reviewing these budgets. I have not agenda here beyond sharing facts with all of you. If it’s good it’s good and if it’s bad it’s bad, I’m indifferent as long as it’s factual.

Do I like where I live? Absolutely! The villages is an incredible community and Sumter County could not possibly be any better in my opinion. Some think I have some bias for the village or think I receive some kind of compensation from them, neither is true. But I do have an affinity for a job well done. I worked 20 years in commercial construction, as a project manager for a majority of that time, to manage a project on a scale such as this is a testament to their ability. When it’s good I let you know and when it’s bad I don’t hesitate to let loose with both barrels.

Generally I try to be positive, if you want negativity the pseudo-news site and Nextdoor are where you should go.

I’ve received the developer’s ire on more than a few occasions over my videos, the stuff I reveal, and sharing my opinion, I stopped caring long ago what they think of me.

Deal with facts and not speculation and innuendo and enjoy life a little more.

Originally Posted by ton80 (Post 2249507)

The cart is in Front of the Horse
Before we argue who pays what and how, we need to know and agree what the required expenditures are. I have not seen any public document that addresses why the very large cost and personnel increases are justified. This is something that the Sumter County Commissioners need to review and address.

1. Budget Review and Personnel Planning
There is a need for a fundamental review of why the two Fire Districts/entities need some 50 million dollars more and many more firefighting personnel to serve Sumter Co. I have not seen any discussion on this topic and I believe it is the starting point and the fundamental issue.

2. How To fund The Approved Plan and Budget
This is what the study addressed and looking at how other Counties/Districts financed their budgets is instructive and provides a comparison to Sumter County approach. It appears to me that Sumter County lays the burden more heavily on the homeowner compared to Businesses. Why should the Lofts, for example, only pay the same as any single home owner and not much more since the Lofts have many housing units. Lake County spreads out the cost in a more equitable way.

Looking back at the discussions regarding the Independent Fire District discussions and vote, I believe that the IFD was not approved since there was no indication of how the Sumter County Budget would be revised. It is time to have it all out in the open and explained clearly IMHO.

Originally Posted by kansasr (Post 2249806)

I for one want to say that this was not a waste of time, you managed to clarify some things that I wasn't aware of!

I did not realize that in last year's budget the $124 fire assessment only covered a small portion of the $35 million for the 2 fire districts and the balance came out of the general fund. I always felt it was unfair that I was paying the same fire assessment as Walmart, but now that I see that was only a small portion of the expense, commercial buildings are indeed paying more of a fair share. In the proposed budget, the general county assessment is being DECREASED, from 5.59 to 5.19.

The biggest challenge faced by the county commission is the VERY large increase in the fire budget, primarily from The Villages fire district, which has a proposed increase of almost 100 percent (from $17,934,640 last year to $34,636,054). We asked for a greatly improved ambulance service and this apparently is the price for that request. From looking at the budget, it would appear that the commission just received a lump sum request from the Villages fire district, as there wasn't a detailed breakdown as there was from the fire district for the rest of the county (which, by the way, had a modest increase from $18,884,269 to $24,240,265).

So where do we go from here? The commission has some difficult decisions. First, deciding how much we actually want to pay for improved service. If we want to keep these proposed funding levels, the money has to come from somewhere. If we keep the old system, do we apply a moderate increase to the $124 assessment per lot and increase the county assessment above and beyond the previous year? Or do we implement something like the new proposed system, where the fire assessment actually reflects the total cost of the services?

I'm not sure we pay our commissioners enough for these kinds of decisions!

Originally Posted by tophcfa (Post 2249797)

Why worry about response times for EMS when the result is that the patient is ultimately going to get dumped at a dismal one star rated hospital with quite possibly the worst ER in the entire country. I don’t get the “hurry up and get there so we can wait seemingly forever for woefully substandard health care” mentality? Residents would have been better served saving money and keeping the old ambulance servive until someday (hopefully) when there is a place worth being rushed to!